online identity management system

The OpenID Foundation, which oversees the OpenID online identity management system, scored a major coup today. The foundation announced that representatives from Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo have all joined its board.

Between Yahoo, AOL, LiveJournal and other sites providing their users with an OpenID, there are, according to the OpenID Foundation, “over a quarter of a billion OpenIDs and well over 10,000 websites to accept them.” If those numbers sound overly optimistic to you, consider that everyone who’s ever created an AOL chat account has an OpenID. And that everyone who’s ever logged into Yahoo has an OpenID. Those two services alone probably account for the bulk of the above numbers.